


The Curator and the Daemon

by Exophile_3D (bearbane)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Adventure, Ancient Languages, Comedy, Demon, Demon Boyfriend, Eventual Smut, Exophilia, F/M, Fluff, Guardian - Freeform, Intrigue, Kissing, Library, Monster Lover, Monster Romance, Romance, demon lover, protector - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:08:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26651176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearbane/pseuds/Exophile_3D
Summary: While working late one night at the British library, our heroine meets the daemonic guardian of an ancient Assyrian text.*Last chapter up 27/09/2020*
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 13
Kudos: 59





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written and accepted into an anthology called 'Carpe Noctem', which unfortunately never saw the light of day. Feels right to post it here now.

I promise myself I’m going to finish early today: it is Friday after all. I make that promise a lot. I plan to leave at four, grab something interesting for dinner from the Lebanese shop on the corner and curl up with some wine and falafel in front of the telly. It never happens. I’m one of those lucky people who loves their work. Not more than I love play, you understand, but enough to get sucked into my latest project even when the weekend is calling.

I’m a Curator in the British Library, and my department is in charge of historical acquisitions. A few days ago, an ancient Assyrian text called the Bararu Assur came in, and I’ve spent every waking moment since then researching it to make sure it’s properly catalogued and preserved. I love anything that has a connection with the ancient world: it’s one of the reasons I got into this business. So here I sit at eight p.m. on a Friday, alone in the Archiving room in the Library basement. I’m just finishing off the write-up about the book’s origin for the database, and then I swear to myself that it’s wine, falafel, and home to the cat.

A shuffling noise behind me shatters my concentration and sets my nerves on edge. I turn slowly, feeling horribly exposed with the vast darkness of the endless rows of massive steel shelves behind me. The sound isn’t repeated. I peer into the darkness, but the desk lamp casts only a small circle of light that barely extends beyond my stool.  
“Hello?” I call out. “Alex? Is that you?” It’s my best guess as to who’d be in the Archiving room this time on a Friday. That boy’s even more obsessed with middle-eastern antiquities than I am. No answer. I reach out for my phone and something heavy collides with the back of my neck. My head bounces off the desk and the floor comes rushing up to meet me. There’s a scuffle as my stool is moved, then gloved hands grab me and haul me to my feet. I find myself face to face with a man in a balaclava, and my stomach drops.

“Is this it?” he asks in heavily accented English. “The Bararu Assur?”

Thieves. True, the Library has plenty of valuable items, but not the sort that you could easily sell on the street. My head rolls around on my shoulders as the thief shakes me. “Is this it?” he repeats loudly.  
Something stubborn kicks in inside me. I’m not going to tell him. If he doesn’t know what it is, he doesn’t deserve to have it. With a frustrated sigh, he pushes me from him and I fall over my own feet and collide with the wall, sliding down it to sit on the ground, stunned.

The minutes tick past and the thieves busy themselves at my desk, apparently reading my research and examining the book. I assume it’s a good thing I can’t see their faces, otherwise I’d be fearing for my life right now.  
They struggle with the clasp. Idiots. The instructions for opening it are written on the side, but then I doubt they studied the Classics as I did. One of them gets out a screwdriver and starts to prise the lock open. At this point, the inner voice of reason that’s telling me to stay put and wait this out starts to rebel. That book is a one-of-a-kind. Legends aside, it’s a two-thousand year old manuscript bound in leather, edged in pure gold, and written in ink that hasn’t faded despite the march of the centuries. I’m a Curator, damn it, and I can’t stand idly by and watch them damage it.

I rise slowly and edge my way along the table while their backs are towards me. I can hear the screwdriver blade scraping on the lock and I imagine the scratches on the soft gold. It’s going to give me nightmares for weeks. I grab a vacuum packer, tubular in shape and about 3 pounds in weight. With my Curator’s courage burning like a fire in my belly, I raise it and with every ounce of strength I can muster, I clock the nearest one over the back of the head with it. Revenge is sweet.  
Several things happen at once. The vacuum packer splits neatly into two pieces, rendering it much less effective than I hope; the force of the blow causes the screwdriver to slip hard, breaking the lock open – and then the entire room explodes in a blinding flash of purple light with an accompanying shock-wave that hurls the three of us to the side of the room where I fell earlier.  
I’m getting far too familiar with that wall.

When my vision clears again, I realise that someone else has arrived. Scratch that: something else. Just outside the weak circle of light cast by my desk-lamp, a huge figure looms. It’s taller than the doorway and about four times as wide. My head tries to make sense of this and fails. I must have taken another knock when I fell. Presently, the figure moves forward and I can see it in its entirety. It’s a man – or male, at least – tall and powerfully built, with feathered wings extending from his shoulders and some sort of twisted crown on his head. I close my eyes and rub them vigorously, but he’s still there when I open them. He raises his right hand and I see that he carries a scythe. Great. I can see the headlines now: ‘Three dead in scythe attack by winged man in the basement of the British Library’. The tabloids will have a field day. His voice cuts across my thoughts.

“You intended to steal the Bararu Assur and use its power against the world. Be you now judged.”

The two thieves beside me scramble to their feet and rush him, one of them pulling a handgun. The winged man catches one by the throat as he closes with him, and the other he touches with the blade of his scythe. The unfortunate gunman stops dead in his tracks. His skin turns ashen, then the colour of granite, then he begins to crumble to dust before my eyes. I feel the colour drain from my face and I start to go numb. Shock, I suspect. At this, the other thief struggles hard against the winged man’s grasp and I see his eyes bulge as the scythe blade swings around to touch him. In less than ten seconds, the second thief is also dust. My heart skips a beat. I’m the only one left. However, I’m now utterly convinced this is not some madman playing live action role play. This thing just came out of a book that’s older than Hadrian’s wall and killed two men before my eyes.

Am I next?

He turns his gaze upon me and I find myself wishing I’d made a will.

“And you…” He pauses and steps closer, frowning down at me. I try to become one with the wall, pushing back against it and wishing it would swallow me up. I can see him in more detail now and I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like him. His eyes are a vivid green, pulsing with a soft light, and wildly intelligent. In the glow of the desk lamp, I can see his smooth, dark skin, the patches of golden scales that erupt along shin and forearm, the slabs of sculpted muscle laid across chest and abdomen. Most compelling of all is his face, carved in long lines with smooth planes, alien yet familiar, and crowned with twin digitate antlers. He twitches his shoulders and the tawny wings fold neatly away. As they do so, I catch a glimpse of a slender, tufted tail curling behind him.

He draws my attention back to my predicament by planting his scythe butt-end on the floor with a clang that echoes through the Archiving room.

“You tried to protect the Bararu Assur. Are you its mortal Guardian?” he asks with a twitch of one thick, arched eyebrow.

My mind races. If I say yes, will he test me on its contents or history, or ask me things only its true Guardian would know? If I say no, will I end up as a third pile of dust? And chasing these thoughts around, how hard did I hit my head that I’m hallucinating guys with wings materialising out of two-thousand-year-old books and incinerating gunmen in balaclavas?

“Well?” he demands. Apparently he doesn’t have much patience. He lifts his scythe and lowers the blade toward me so I can feel the cold of its edge, sucking the warmth from the air around me.

“Y-yes,” I stammer. “I suppose I am, in a manner of speaking.”

His eyes narrow, his brow furrows. “Explain yourself!”

Great. Just what I hoped he wouldn’t say. I get really nervous in high-pressure situations, and this one definitely qualifies. In the interview for my Curator position, I babbled on for about forty minutes about the preservation of Egyptian papyrus. For once, it worked in my favour as it taught the old fuddy-duddies on the panel how good it would be to have a fresh perspective as well as in-depth knowledge of the subject matter. It’s my go-to coping mechanism. Verbal diarrhoea. I summon up a batch.  
“Well, you see I work in acquisitions, which means I get to vet and review all the incoming inventory, so when I saw on the listings that the Syrian government was sending over a book called the Bararu Assur, naturally I knew it would come to my department. I suspected it was a forgery – I’ve seen many in the past ten years – but imagine my surprise when it came in and I managed to validate it as the real thing!” I pause, reflecting and puff my fringe out of my eyes. “I had thought it was just another piece of history lost to the fires of Alexandria, or the Nazis or any number of book-burning fanatics over the years. Do you have any idea how many crazy book-burners there are? I mean there are people in the States who burn Harry Potter books, for goodness’ sake! Anyway, I was here writing up its history when those guys came in and tried to steal it. I tried to stop them, I really did…”

See what I mean? Verbal diarrhoea.

He stops me with a wave of his hand. I clam up. My boss and most of my colleagues (and at times some of my friends) would love to have that power.

“I need to learn about the world into which I’ve awakened, Guardian,” he informs me. “Take me to where your people meet.”

“Of course,” I say. Then I kick myself, mentally. Where can I take him where people aren’t going to think he’s insane, or ask too many questions? Then it clicks. The Hatchet, one of my regular haunts, is having a cosplay night.

I struggle to my feet, my heart calming from an ‘ohmygodhe’sgoingtokillmetoo’ rhythm to a ‘okhe’sprobablynotgoingtokillmebuthe’sstilldamnscary’ tattoo. I brush myself down and check the back of my head. No blood. I thank heaven for small mercies. He watches expectantly.

“Alright,” I manage, my voice shaking. “But I’d like to know who I’m dealing with.”

“Anaël,” he says and there is a rumbling in the air as the word is spoken. I read far too much, especially about the ancient world and its mythology, and I’m pretty sure there is true power in the word he’s just spoken. And I know him. Or at least, I’ve heard of him. He’s a Eudaemon, a demon or spirit, but not a completely nasty one (or so it’s said). It’s hard to tell with these stories from antiquity. So much has been distorted and rewritten, and perspectives have changed so much in the intervening centuries that any information that exists about a being from that time needs to be taken as a rough guideline rather than gospel truth. “And you?”

“Seren,” I respond.

“From where do you hail, Mistress Seren?”

“Uh, Temple Bar?”

“Fitting,” he nods. “Can you place the book into safekeeping until we can return for it?”

I nod. Now that I can definitely do. I place it into the lock-box I prepared for it earlier and file it on one of the moving racks, taking a mental note of its location. It’s four levels up and six back, in amongst some older items. It can only be reached with the cherry picker and no-one’s even due to be in here until Monday. I decide it’s secure and the Eudaemon also seems satisfied with my choice.

“Lead on, mistress Seren of Temple Bar,” he invites me with a wave of his scythe. 

I knew I should have finished early tonight.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anaël and Seren search for the thieves' accomplices, and Seren introduces him to some of the 'delights' of London.

The London Underground has seen plenty of strange sights over the years. A couple of years back, a bunch of men dressed up as the guys from 300 took the Northern Line up to HMV to stand outside the shop all day as a marketing stunt. Plus there’s always some crazy party happening somewhere, so people in fancy dress are not at all uncommon. Most travellers will look, maybe laugh, maybe snap a picture, and then go back to their own business. The problem with Anaël is that he only just about passes for a human in outlandish costume in the dark, and under the stark light of the Tube, his true nature is revealed in all its otherworldly strangeness. Fortunately, most people don’t look too closely at anything – ever – and so we make it to our stop with only a small amount of interest in our passing.

We enter the Hatchet and I instantly feel more relaxed. The atmosphere is dark and thick with dry ice, and people in weird costumes are in the majority. In amongst the characters from Dragonball-Z and Sailor Moon, there are also a sprinkling of Dantes, Altairs and Ezios, and even a fairly laughable attempt at an Illidan. Anaël’s Eudaemonic guardian of the Bararu Assur almost fits in.

“Just let me do the talking,” I say to him in an aside.

“Of course,” he says, inclining his head. I stare at him until he elaborates. “You are the mortal Guardian, born to this time. I know nothing of your customs. I trust you to steer my path amongst your people.”

I nod. That should make things easier. Then comes the kicker. Jez is here. My uber-sexy techno-goth friend who has an annoying habit of being utterly irresistible to any eligible man in the room. I’d often tried to analyse her success and even copy her methods. But my petite five feet four couldn’t compare to her elegant five feet nine, even without the kinky platforms she wore, and my modest bust paled next to the rack she so teasingly displayed, usually spilling out over the top of a buckled brocade corset. I deflate. I guess this is where I lose this fascinating – if dangerous – creature straight out of myth to my more successful, more attractive friends.

He barely says a word, as we agreed. He must know his language is completely out of place here, and I pass him off as a friend from abroad who doesn’t speak much English. He just listens and nods occasionally to the questions and suggestions levelled at him, with the odd ‘yes’ or ‘no’ thrown in for good measure. All eyes are on him: with the antlers and wings he cuts a striking, alien figure and people just can’t help but stare. He’s well over six feet tall, with skin so darkly tanned he looks like he must spend half the year in some tropical paradise, or else be descended from middle-eastern nobility. His hair is inky black and flows over his broad shoulders as though heavy with moisture. Oh, and he’s utterly ripped and wearing next to nothing. He’s quite possibly the sexiest thing any of us have seen outside of pure fiction, and he’s as large as life and sitting at our table.

The evening rolls on and I watch girl after girl fawn over him but pretty soon the revelation hits: he’s not interested. I watch the subtle misdirection as he makes them turn their attention elsewhere, and I start to wonder what he’s planning. His eyes scan the room constantly but whatever he’s looking for, he doesn’t find it in the Hatchet that night. Not that it deters Jez. That girl has absolutely no shame and really doesn’t know when to quit. Presently, he turns to me and breathes through his teeth, which alerts me to the fact that his tongue is forked and his canines long and pointed. “We leave now.”

I glance at my half-finished drink, wondering whether knocking it back will help me deal with the remainder of the evening, and I decide against it. I guess (although what experience I’m basing this on I’ve no idea) that a semi-clear head is what’s required to deal with supernatural book guardians. We get to our feet together, and a chorus of disappointed sighs arises from those around the table.

“Sorry, guys, early start tomorrow,” I explain.

Jez looks like she wants to eat my brains with a fork.

Anaël bows to the assembled gaggle of girls and strides out of the pub, sweeping me before him with one well-muscled arm. Outside on the street, his bizarre appearance is even more noticeable. A group of teenagers loitering at the bus-stop with cans of lager start to point and shout.

“Fucking gay twat!” yells one.

“Drag queen bitch arsehole!” adds another.

I assume they’re referring to the dark, floor-length loin-cloth he’s wearing, or perhaps his waist-length hair. They must also assume his scythe is plastic, because there’s no way I’d antagonise a man who’s built like a Greek god, stands over seven feet tall (at the tips of the antlers) and is wielding a sharp-edged weapon nearly the same length. Anaël couldn’t be less interested. He ignores them completely, raising his head and breathing deep of the night breeze. His profile is stark and angular against the jet of the night sky and I watch as he closes his eyes and inhales, his great chest rising and falling with each breath. “They are close,” he says on the last exhale.

“Who?” I ask, one eye on the louts in the shelter. I’m afraid of what will happen to them should they suffer a moment of lager-induced insanity and decide to give the ‘drag queen’ a beating.

“Those who wanted to steal the Bararu Assur,” he replies.

I pause, my mouth pursing in confusion. “Didn’t you disintegrate them in the British Library?”

“They were lackeys,” he says, his tone laced with impatience now. “Someone sent them. Powerful men rarely do their own menial work.”

I had to agree with that. “So you’re going to go find them?” I ask. “And … turn them to dust too?” He nods curtly, eyeing the edge of his scythe with interest. I wonder idly what the police would think if they came across a 7-foot, antler-headed Eudaemon roaming across London on a book-based vendetta.

“Come, Seren of Temple Bar, let us seek out the head of this cult and cut it off!”

I stare blankly at him. “You want me to come with you?”

The louts are egging each other on behind him, pushing each other around in a chimpanzee-like display of pre-attack aggression. I know I should be more worried about that and its potential consequences, but I can’t focus on anything but him. His expectation looms large in my consciousness. He thinks I’m dedicated to preserving that book, that I have sworn my mortal life to defending it from the powers of evil. Boy, is he ever barking up the wrong tree! But his eyes are locked onto mine and he wants an answer. He’s been waiting for who knows how many hundreds of years for the book to be under threat, and is expecting a mortal Guardian counterpart. Having said that, I recall that I was willing to whack a guy on the head to try to save it, and who knew, I might be willing to go even further to protect a priceless artefact of unparalleled historical value. But he’s talking about being an accessory to murder.

“I-” I begin, not sure how I’m going to finish the sentence, and then the louts rush us. I scream, not for my safety, not for Anaël’s, but for theirs. I watch him raise the scythe and I hurl myself forward, thinking to catch his arm, to beg him not to kill. I stop abruptly as the scythe handle collides with my chest. He’s handing it to me. I gawp for a moment then readily accept it. The louts charge as one, eyes wild in animalistic fury and the punches quickly start flying. I step back, clutching the weapon across me and watch in wonder as each of the young men is thrown bodily from the Eudaemon like rag dolls. A single side-swipe of a brawny arm is all it takes. One, more intellectually challenged than the rest, comes back for seconds. Anaël is happy to oblige. He strides away from the bruised and battered group, leaving them rolling around on the floor, and he retrieves his scythe as he passes me. I trot to keep up with him, my feeling of relief at his handling of the situation tempered as I wonder how that last kid is going to get down off that lamp-post.

The next twenty minutes pass in a blur. We march double-time down several back-streets, drawing odd looks from passersby. I’m glad of the time I’ve spent on the running machine recently, as well as my decision to take the stairs instead of the lift at work. Still, the pace is taxing so I ask Anaël where we’re going.

“A subterranean passage a few streets away,” he replies without breaking stride.

As we walk, feeling more confident since I’ve seen him exercise restraint, I pepper him with questions. Some he answers, some he ignores, and some he just looks at me with those alien eyes as though he doesn’t understand why a person would ask such a thing. We really are from different worlds. Among other things, I learn that his main reason for wanting to stop the men who are after the book is to prevent them bringing about some sort of mass destruction event. I don’t quite grasp the details, as they are couched in terms that were probably quite familiar to someone living in Assyria two thousand years ago, but to me they just sound like fairy tales. He appears to be in earnest however, so I give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he does appear to be a bona fide Eudaemon.

At last we stop outside an abandoned underground station, barred and padlocked and long disused. He grabs the bars and wrenches at them, breaking the padlock and bending the bars in the process. He bounds inside while I pull the mangled gate closed behind us. Ahead, a silent, dusty escalator leads down into blackness. Anaël passes the open ticket barrier and peers down. “This one doesn’t move?”

He’s referring to a little escapade we had on a working escalator in Camden Town earlier. He absolutely didn’t understand why stairs needed to move instead of the people on them, but followed my lead in standing on the right as we ascended. I’ll remember the image of him riding the escalator up past the posters for Wicked and Cats for the rest of my life.

“No,” I reply. I catch a sound off to my left and I can see a crack of light under a metal door next to the ticket office. “Here,” I whisper.

He’s at the door before me, his every action urgent and deliberate. He hauls it open and we step into a stairwell. The light comes from above, as does the noise, and we race up the stairs together. At least, we start off that way. Anaël soon outdistances me, and by the time I’ve reached the top, he’s already made quite an entrance and is passively terrorising the four men who are falling over themselves to get away from him.

One of them, dark-skinned, dark haired and dark eyed, is looking at Anaël in utter terror and babbling words under his breath in some language I guess is from the middle east. He then begins to berate the man I assume to be in charge, screaming at him in his native tongue and gesticulating wildly. The boss smacks the man aside, striking him hard across the cheek, and he subsides.

“Be you now judged,” intones Anaël.

The boss laughs and draws his gun, a signal to the other three to do the same. One of the tidbits of information I’ve elicited from Anaël in my incessant questioning today jumps to the forefront of my mind, and I flip the light switch and throw myself out of the door. The room erupts into an orgy of gunfire and I sit down hard on the ground and slap my hands over my ears. Soon, I hear the sounds I expect. The gunfire lessens gradually as each scream marks the death of another gunman until finally, all is silent. I push myself to my feet and dust myself off.

Anaël can see in the dark.

I flip the light switch again and see that the Eudaemonic guardian of the Bararu Assur stands alone in the room, accompanied by three small piles of dust.

“Good work, Guardian,” he says.

“Uh yeah, good work yourself, I respond, eyeing the destruction, the smoking guns, the bullet-ridden walls. My hearing is returning to normal, and I can hear sirens. Someone must have reported the gunfire. “Quick,” I say. “We have to leave now!”

Anaël shakes his head. “There is one left. Did he pass you?”

“No,” I reply. I point out another set of stairs in the far corner of the room and we head upwards, emerging onto the flat roof to see the boss crouching in the shadows, shouting into his mobile phone. Anaël leaps across the roof in a single bound, aided by his wings, and seizes the man by the scruff of the neck.

The boss manages to squeak, “He’s here,” into the phone before Anaël’s scythe ends him. The wind is strong up here, and his dust is quickly borne away.

“You need to leave. Now,” I tell Anaël.

He turns to me in confusion. “My work is not yet done.”

“The police are coming,” I tell him. “You can’t be here when they arrive. They won’t understand what you’ve done, how many people you’re trying to save.”

“These men are your peacekeepers?” he asks.

“Yes, but-”

Then surely they can be reasoned with?” he asks. “I will simply explain to them about the Bararu Assur and they will let me go about my business.”

“No!” I yell back at him. “They won’t!”

He draws back a little, surprised by my outburst.

“This isn’t the world you knew, Anaël. People don’t believe in demons or angels or magical books. They’ll think you’re mad and try to lock you up.”

Anaël throws back his head and laughs deep in his chest. “They may try!”

A cold lump of fear settles in the pit of my stomach. It can only go one of two ways: the police will confront him and he’ll kill innocent men, or they’ll manage to take him in and he’ll end up in a lab somewhere being dissected in the name of science. I’m not a religious person, but I know full well this creature can only be explained in terms of mythology. Science doesn’t even enter into it.

I have to get through to him somehow. The wailing of sirens is close now and I can see flashes of red and blue down the canyon of high-rises to my left. Gathering all my courage, I grab his scaled forearms and step close, looking straight up into that angular face with its alien-familiar eyes and say, “If you want to protect the Bararu Assur, you’ll leave now. The men who are coming will either kill you or take you prisoner, depending on whether you fight back.”

He scowls at me. “I am no coward. I do not run from danger nor shirk my responsibilities.”

“And you wouldn't be shirking them by leaving now,” I insist. “These men fight for good, but they won’t understand what you’re doing. Leave now. Live and be free to hunt down the true head of this cult.” I use his own words to try to convince him. It appears to be working.

“Truly you are a worthy Guardian,” he says. He smiles then, an expression that completely transforms the hard planes of his face and makes my heart do girly flips in my chest. “You are a good foil for my hot-headedness in this unfamiliar world.” He stares at me with that devastating smile on his face for a moment or two longer, then he stoops, partly lifts me from the ground and plants a firm kiss on my lips.

All sound and movement cease. The sirens are gone, the world goes black and I can’t feel the wind tugging at my hair. I know only a single, pure sensation of warmth and utter pleasure where his lips meet mine.

In a flash, the moment ends, and the world comes rushing back in, harsh, loud and bright. I stagger back with my mouth half-open. His smile has faded somewhat, and it has been replaced with something infinitely more primal. I swallow hard. My perception of him changes completely.

“Until tomorrow, Seren of Temple Bar,” he says. And with that, he unfurls his huge wings and hurls himself from the roof. I race to the edge and grab the railing, eyes wide. My concern is misplaced. He pulls up mere feet from the ground and soars upwards, wings beating in powerful downward strokes. He is quickly lost from sight.

Then the searchlight hits my face and I realise I’ve just convinced Anaël to leave me alone at a crime scene with half the Metropolitan Police Force waiting outside.

One of these days I really must get my head tested.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seren and Anaël try to hunt down the head of the book-stealing cult.

It’s a long night. I manage to dissociate myself from any of the events of the evening by telling the police I’m doing a project for the British Library on disused Tube stations of the 1960s era. Again, my verbal diarrhoea saves the day as I tell them in minute detail all the things I’ve discovered and all the stations I’m planning to include in the project, along with dates of the exhibition. I worked on the project not much more than a year ago, so it’s all relatively fresh in my mind. My British Library ID card goes a long way to corroborating my story. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, heard the gunfire and ran up onto the roof. I’m treated as an innocent bystander, given a blanket and a cup of tea and biscuits, and get a free ride home in a Panda car. Score.

It gets to around three a.m. and I realise I’m not going to be able to sleep any time soon. I get up to make myself a mug of cocoa and curl up on the couch with the cat and a blanket. I know I should be more afraid of Anaël. I’ve personally witnessed him turn three men into dust tonight, and I know he did the same to three more, but it’s been a hell of a night. Those men would have killed him – and possibly me – but Anaël got to them first. I can’t figure out the right and wrong of it. Does today’s moral compass even apply to him? History so old it’s indistinguishable from legend has just walked straight into my life and blown all accepted theories about creatures such as angels and demons out of the water.

And then there was the kiss. I know I should be concentrating more on working out whether what he had done was right or wrong, but the memory of that single, blistering instant keeps bubbling to the surface. What did it mean to him? Would I ever see him again? And if I did, what would I do? Eventually, my overtaxed body and mind give up, and I fall asleep on the couch with Mr Conical’s paw on my face.

The next day, I recall that Anaël said he would see me ‘tomorrow’. How would he find me, I wondered. Should I return to the Library? I suspect he could probably find me wherever I was with that uncanny knack he appeared to have for tracking people down. I glance around the flat and my heart sinks. I spend the next half an hour frantically cleaning until the worst of the mess is gone. The hours tick past and the shadows lengthen. I get antsy. Has he been discovered and institutionalised? Should I have gone to the Library? Or does he expect me, as ‘Guardian’, to know where to meet him?  
At around eight o’clock, the patio door to my tiny balcony slides open and he steps into the room. I stand up, my mug of tea still firmly grasped in my hand. I am British, after all. “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting all day for you,” I say.

“I prefer the night. Besides, I thought you would be happier consorting with me in the darkness – would you not, Mistress Seren?”

My mouth drops open. I can’t figure out what he means. Does he mean he thinks I’m ashamed to be seen with him in the daylight? Or is he hinting that he thinks I want to be alone in the dark with him? That thought instantly sends my imagination to somewhere it really doesn’t need to be. It doesn’t help that he’s standing here in my flat with his antlers almost brushing the ceiling, filling my small lounge with his presence. The creamy lamplight throws one side of his face and body into shadow, while the other is in soft relief – but there is nothing soft about him. The angular face and slanted eyes are offset by pointed ears; the contours of his shoulders and abdomen are sharply cut and ridged with veins; his hipbones jut above the dark red and black cloth that hangs from chains at his waist, and his hands and fingers are bony and strong. He looks hard all over – and that thought sets my body tingling.

I’m aware that he is awaiting an answer, and is looking dangerously amused at my hesitation. What had he asked me again? “I think it’ll be easier to hide your appearance from people at night,” I dissemble. “People are more likely to approach you during the daytime. Besides, the police probably have an APB out on you now.”

“That was not my meaning,” he says, circling around the armchair and closing the gap between us. My mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water. The light dims. I instantly blame those energy-saving bulbs – they’re never as bright as the incandescent ones – and then I realise that it’s _him_. Somehow he’s making the lights go out to bring about the very darkness he mentioned. I have no time to consider this further because he reaches me, his arm locks around me and his mouth comes down to kiss me. I drop the mug. This time it goes beyond a fleeting moment of pleasure. This time the connection is deeper. My arms snake unbidden around his neck while his enfold me. I can feel the heat radiating from him like a coal fire in winter and it warms parts of me I never knew were cold. While his lips and tongue engage my own, I press hard against him, finding places where our bodies meld into one and delighting in them. Presently, his hand hooks my left leg behind the knee and raises it to his waist. I suck in a ragged breath as I realise how much he’s enjoying this, and then I lose myself as his mouth devours mine again.

With a low sigh of regret, Anaël drops my leg, slackens his grip on my waist and releases my mouth. I am suddenly, acutely aware of how long it’s been since I had a man in my bed.

“We have work to do,” he says, his eyes downcast. “But I swear to you…” he adds, catching and holding my gaze with his, nearly scorching me with its intensity. “I always finish what I begin.”

I fight the crazy urges pounding through my veins, inciting me to tempt him further, to appeal to the male in him and lead him into my bedroom. It’s a long minute before I trust myself to speak again.

“Then let’s get on with it,” I reply.

On the way, we get take-out from Starbucks, which Anaël proclaims as ‘the drink of the gods’. After a few sips, I have to agree with him. I’m definitely feeling a bit more normal now. I wasn’t expecting him to actually climb the walls after it, though. Great. Now I’ve got a randy, caffeine-fuelled, book-obsessed Eudaemon to deal with. No more Starbucks for him.

Our path takes us along several back streets once again. I decide that keeping him out of sight as much as possible is probably the order of the day. As we walk, we discuss what is left to accomplish.

“We must hunt down the one who sent the others,” avers Anaël.

“So the last guy you …uh… turned to dust last night wasn’t the man in charge?” I ask.

“No. He was merely a Lieutenant. The General is still hidden from my sight and must be rooted out.” Anaël’s words come from between gritted teeth. I get the impression he’s chafing at how long this is taking.

“How did you know where to find the others?” I ask. 

“I took the knowledge from the man in the Library before he died,” says Anaël, matter-of-factly.

“You can read people’s minds?” I demand, loud enough to attract attention. I hurry on with my head down.

“No,” Anaël laughs. “But I can harvest the last thoughts of a dying soul when their lives are finished by my scythe,” he explains. He throws me a sidelong glance. “Why? Are you afraid I would read your mind, Mistress Seren?”

I open my mouth to answer, but considering what has just happened in my flat, I rather suspect he doesn’t need to read my mind to know what’s on it. I return his sidelong glance and we grin tentatively at each other.

“How long have you been the book's Guardian?” he asks after a little while.

I hesitate then tell him the truth. I have no desire to lie to him. “It’s been in my care for about two days.”

There is silence for about three heartbeats and it feels like an eternity. “And what have you found out about it in that time?” he asks. His expression gives nothing away.

My motor-mouth takes over. It excels at moments like this. He receives a deluge of information, regurgitated from my long hours of exciting research, with the passion I hold for its discovery clear in my words.

When I stop, he nods and then shakes his head in wonder. “All that in two days? Truly remarkable!” While I stare at him agog, he begins to tell me exactly what I’ve got wrong; what all the historians have got wrong. In return, I learn its true history, date of creation, method of construction, and more importantly, how he was recruited from the spirit plane and bound to be the book’s protector.  
When he has finished and my subsequent questions are exhausted, we walk for awhile in silence. It’s one thing to play detective and piece together an item’s history through painstaking research, but it’s another thing altogether to have a living-memory account from someone directly connected with it. One question still burns in my mind, however. “Why do these men want it? I thought it was a holy book, with tales of the Assyrian gods and heroes of mythology?” 

“That much is true. But one such story tells how a hero built a device that could melt rock and reduce entire cities to rubble.”

“Symbolic folklore, surely?” I venture.

“The power to create the device is contained within the book,” explains Anaël. I get the impression he means it’s _physically_ part of the book, rather than just referenced within the text. I’m now even more concerned that these men want to take it, and I feel a strange sort of protective urge towards it.

“Then why didn’t your people just destroy it?” I ask. “Why recruit an Eudaemon and bind him to the book for eternity just to make sure no bad guys could their hands on it?” 

“There is a reason it has survived this long, despite all the attempts to unmake it through the ages. It is indestructible.” Once again, he has achieved the impossible and left me at a loss for words.

We gain access to the basement of the Library using my key-card. Thankfully, I can use the underground entrance and so no-one sees my strange companion as we descend to the Archiving room. All is just as we left it. I retrieve the box and we open it under the light of my desk-lamp.

“It’s gone.” I hate to state the obvious, but my mind can’t process this. My spine freezes. I double check the inventory number, but this is definitely the box I put it in yesterday.

“This place you have chosen is secure, is it not?” he demands angrily. “Who else had the means to reach it?”

I puff at my fringe. “Any number of people. All of my team, the senior curators. Plus there’s been a lot of buzz around it since it came in. I imagine any number of them would have been keen to take a look.” I check the log file. It hasn’t been signed out. I glance up at his face and my insides shrivel at what I see there: anger, outrage and utter disappointment. I swallow hard and force my thoughts along a more constructive path. “What did you learn from the ‘Lieutenant’ last night?” I ask. “Do you know where we need to look for the ‘General’?

“Yes. I would have sought him out next regardless, and now I suspect he already has what he needs.” I can feel my cheeks colouring and find I’m feeling extraordinarily embarrassed, as though I’ve shirked some important responsibility. “We must seek this city’s Oracle,” he states.

I stare at him blankly. “You mean like the Oracle of Delphi? I’m not sure London has one of those,” I say, turning on the monitor at the side of my desk and firing up a browser.

“What are you doing?” he demands, stepping closer and peering at the screen. “What is this?”

“Something better than an Oracle,” I say. “Most of the knowledge in the world can be accessed through this screen.”

Anaël looks askance at me.

“The Lieutenant told you to look for the Oracle?” I ask, typing ‘London Oracle’ into the search bar.

“In a manner of speaking,” replies Anaël.

It’s my turn to glance questioningly at him.

“I gathered that I will find the General underneath the City’s eye. Surely a reference to an Oracle,” he posited.

“The City’s eye?” I ask. “The _London_ Eye?”

“There is such a thing?” he asks, hope and enthusiasm lighting his long features.

I bring up the London Eye on Google Maps and show it to him. He is less than impressed. I gather he was expecting something more mystical and esoteric than a giant Ferris-wheel. I spend a few minutes searching for what might be below it and find a reference on an Urban Exploration site about the disused Tube line that runs directly underneath it, along with detailed notes and pictures showing how they accessed it. I love the Internet.

A few moments later, I send the directions to my smartphone and I stuff it in my bag along with a torch and a Tube timetable. I nod to Anaël and we head for the door.

Before I can swipe my key-card, Anaël grasps my arm and turns me to face him, his face solemn. “There is danger in this venture,” he says. “You have been extremely brave and I vouch that I had no idea how new you were to this when first we met. If you will but guide me to the gateway, I will do what needs to be done.” He leans closer to me and his scent washes over me, earthy and spicy, eminently masculine. “There is no need to endanger yourself further.”

For a moment, I’m flattered. He cares about my safety and it sends a warmth through my belly as well as filling me with a sense of relief. I glance into his eyes and I see the truth of his words reflected there. The thing is, I’m curious now. I feel like I’m making my own mythological history here and I want to be there first-hand when it all plays out. I feel partly responsible for losing the book in the first place, and besides, if there’s anything that I can do to help him as I did in the last shoot-out, small though it might be, I really want to do it.

I laugh and pat his hand. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

I swear they’ll carve that on my gravestone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Showdown

I’m actually surprised as we cross the capital again how little attention Anaël draws. I suppose it’s partly that he’s not actively looking for it. Turns out you can look as weird as you want in London by night and as long as you’re not flaunting it, most people will leave you well enough alone.

We follow the instructions on my smartphone (by which Anaël is understandably fascinated, and promptly names it my ‘Tiny Oracle’) and soon we reach the entrance to the disused tunnels. I turn the torch to its dimmest setting and follow Anaël down the wet, dripping staircase beneath the South Bank. I almost lose my footing as I watch the play of muscles beneath his dark skin, rippling around his wings as he moves, bunching and releasing as he descends. I chuckle self-deprecatingly as he turns to check I’m alright, but seeing him turned towards me, and knowing that I’m alone with him in the near-dark sends my girly hormones into a frenzy. He senses it. I can tell by the smouldering look on his face. He ascends a single step, bringing his head to a level with mine. He reaches out and touches my cheek, tilting my face so he can kiss me. Unfortunately, it’s only the briefest of ecstasies, as I almost immediately drop the torch. I turn into a right butter-fingers around him. The clatter brings us both to our senses and he turns to see if there is any sign of alarm.

We continue to descend and gradually emerge into lighted areas, Anaël leading the way. Up ahead, the tunnel curves around and opens into a large side room, which was once part of a concourse for the old station. It has several tables and chairs and is lit by fluorescent lighting. I whisper to Anaël to wait so we can listen and choose a suitable moment, but when it comes to the bad guys, it seems he favours the direct approach. He strides straight into the centre of the concourse and expands his enormous wings, slamming his scythe against the ground.

“Be you now judged!” he roars. He is at least consistent, I have to give him that.

I hear the sounds of several men scrambling to their feet and chairs being overturned, but I can’t see past Anaël’s outstretched wings. I hear a series of whooshing noises, which I take to be Anaël’s wings folding, and a peep around the archway shows me I’m right. I can now see there are five men in the room: four in military fatigues and one in a suit. He’s partly hidden from me by the archway, but the others are clearly visible.

 _Don’t hang around here_ , I urge Anaël mentally. These guys mean business.

As if on cue, the flunkies raise their guns. They’re obviously bigger league than the others, as they’re all packing Ak-47s. Brilliant. Before they can start shooting however, Anaël’s scythe swings out in a devastating arc, catching the hand of the first guard and slicing it clean off. It then cuts through the material of the next man’s shirt before moving on to the other two and maiming them both in some way. It’s enough. The four men start to turn to dust before my eyes. I make a mental note never to get on the wrong side of him.

The man in the suit claps slowly and steps forward into the centre of the concourse. Recognition hits me like a speeding train.

“Alex?” I exclaim, moving forward into the light.

“Seren? What the hell are you doing here?” His eyes flick from me to Anaël and back again and he draws his own conclusions. “ _You’re_ the mortal Guardian?” He throws his hands in the air and sighs, cursing in another language. “If I’d known that, I’d have gotten rid of you ages ago.”

I stand stock-still, mind reeling. We’d been colleagues for years, united by our love of ancient texts, and while I had always thought his interest a little on the unhealthy side of intense, I guessed that was why he’d become an archivist. Funny how I’d never really noticed his middle-eastern ancestry before today, but now I knew, it had been staring me in the face the whole time. He’d known about the Bararu Assur. He’d read the same legends I had, but he’d taken them seriously long before a seven-foot winged warrior turned up in the Library basement.

“Still, it’s never too late, as they say,” Alex says, quirking a smile. Then he aims the gun at me and pulls the trigger.

I see the muzzle flash and I’m too shocked to react. There is a blur of movement as Anaël leaps in front of me, and I feel rather than hear the bullet connect with his body. It’s a solid thud, a horrible, fleshy sound that is worse to witness than the deafening retort of the pistol.

Alex scowls then shrugs. “You were next anyway.” And with that, he empties the clip into Anaël’s chest. Anaël reels from each shot, staggering back with the force of impact, and eventually crashes down onto his back, his wings spayed around him at odd angles, blood everywhere.

I’m numb with shock. For some reason, I’d almost thought him impervious to harm, but the sight of his body, riven with bullet-holes and coursing with blood forces me to re-evaluate. Ignoring Alex, I rush to Anaël’s side and cradle his head in my hands, concerned that I don’t have enough hands to staunch all the wounds in Anaël’s chest, and the frothy blood coming from his mouth really can’t be a good sign. My First Aid at Work training kicks in and tells me he’s got a punctured lung. He needs a hospital. Right now.

Alex has finished reloading the gun and I hear him cock it. “Still alive, Eudaemon?” he asks. “Good, you can watch the mortal Guardian die and know you failed utterly.”

Anaël whispers something, his words bubbling up between bloodstained lips. I can’t make all of it out, but he definitely says ‘Bararu Assur’. He beckons to Alex, who leans closer to listen.

“The Eudaemon Guardian,” whispers Anaël. “There’s something you don’t know about the legend.”

“What’s that, dead man?” asks Alex.

In movement so fast I barely perceive it, Anaël pushes me aside, clamps one hand around Alex’s neck and another around his gun-hand. His eyes meet mine, and I’m terrified at what I see in them. This is his swansong. My eyes blur with tears, but I realise he’s looking pointedly at something. His scythe. I heft it with difficulty, Alex watching with bulging eyes as I do so.

“I always finish what I begin,” growls Anaël, and with that, he nods, I swing the scythe, and Alex becomes so much dust.

I barely remember the next half hour, apart from the blood and the sheer white-knuckled panic. I make a tough choice and call a friend. He arrives within minutes with a medical kit, and to be fair to him, despite the strangeness of the situation, he follows his training and gets straight to work. Carl’s a semi-regular at the Hatchet. He’s also a combat medic in the T.A., and he’s damn good at his job. When I see him about to ask questions about Anaël, I quote patient confidentiality at him. Besides, I remind him, they’ve already met.

To my profound relief, once the initial battle-damage is patched, Anaël recovers quickly. He immediately pesters me to look for the book, which I find easily in a box at the back of the room. Within an hour, he is back on his feet and professes himself ready to leave. I ask Carl to keep our secret, at least for the time being, and he readily agrees. No-one’s going to believe him anyway.

The journey back seems to take forever. It’s a little harder to blend in, even as a costumed party-goer, when you’re covered in blood. So we leave the Tube in favour of the streets and make our way back to my place by a roundabout route that avoids all the main roads.

Back in my flat, I introduce Anaël to the modern marvel that is the electric shower. Half an hour later, I’m really regretting it. My water bill’s going to be sky-high this month. When he finally emerges, wet and glistening and dripping water all over the carpet, I make a mental note to hide all the towels. Not that he seems interested in them anyway. In point of fact, at this precise moment in time, I’d say there was only one thing on his mind.

I rise and meet him half-way across the living room. I deftly avoid his attempt to kiss me and grab his hand, leading him through to my bedroom. As soon as we arrive, I realise there’s a logistical issue I hadn’t considered. The Eudaemon has foot-long antlers on top of his head. How’s that going to work with my headboard and pillows? Tutting, I throw the pillows down to the foot of the bed but as I turn to reach for him, he’s already upon me, bearing me down onto the plump mattress with all the hunger he has harboured these last two days driving his actions.

He is at once passionate and eager, and I have a hard time keeping pace with him. My clothes are quickly gone, and his hot mouth is soon feasting on every part of me. When the union comes, it almost blinds me with its intensity. My hands sketch over the broad muscles of his chest and abdomen, finding the small scars that are all that remain of the bullet-holes and I whisper to him, over and over that I am sorry I revealed him but that I couldn’t let him die. He silences my words with a kiss that lasts until my regrets are gone, and I can focus on nothing but the raw intimacy of the moment.

As I lie in the afterglow, I watch the odd movement of the shadows on the walls made by his antlers and listen to the soft tapping of his tail as it flicks around restlessly on the covers.

“So what happens now?” I ask eventually. “Will you go back to guarding the book from inside?”

“The lock is broken. I cannot return. Besides, there are other men out there who covet its power. That Oracle device you showed me-”

“The Internet?”

He nods. “You say it holds all the knowledge in the world. All those who have ever sought the book’s power will be alert to its resurgence.”

“So you need to remain on guard,” I say, nodding pensively.

“As do you,” he adds. The look that passes between us is loaded with questions and possibilities. He raises himself onto his elbow, his black hair slipping across his shoulder like so much silk, and he touches my cheek. He must sense the insecurity that still wracks me. “No-one knows who they are until their true purpose is revealed. You may not have thought that you were the book’s Guardian, but you have proven yourself to be just that through your deeds.”

I can’t help but wonder if he’s right.

“I want to stand at your side, work with you, be part of your life,” he states simply.

My mouth falls open and my mind enters a spin cycle. I imagine him in a suit in the basement of the British Library, cataloguing antiquities with his horns on full display and his tail poking out of his trousers. I imagine him back in the Hatchet on a non-cosplay night, and the look on my friends’ faces as I explain to them that I’ve landed myself a Eudaemon. I guess at how long it will be before his identity is known to the public, and then wonder which magazine he’ll be cover-boy for first: Bizarre, Scientific American or the Fortean Times. I lay my hand on his chest and bow my head. I can feel his heartbeat, slow and steady, and I wish I was as calm as him.

“We are counterparts, you and I. Together we can face all who come for the Bararu Assur, and our bond will grow stronger each day,” he says. My response is curtailed as he runs a finger down over my collarbone, between my breasts and down over my stomach. I get sidetracked wondering where it’s going to stop and soon I find out. “I will make sure of that,” he says, his voice low and hoarse. I draw a ragged breath and move against his hand. His lips meet mine and his forked tongue teases my open mouth. I find that both he and I are ready again after only the briefest of respites. Maybe he’s right about this counterpart business after all.

On the bedside table, my mobile phone and a Starbucks coffee cup sit incongruously next to the Bararu Assur. It strikes me as a metaphor for the turn my life is taking: the ancient world sits alongside the modern, and while they may look odd together, I know these things can complement each other. If Anaël wants to make his life here, then I’ll stand by him, lager louts, gun-wielding maniacs and treacherous archivists notwithstanding. After all, I’m not just a Curator at the British Library, I’m the mortal Guardian of the Bararu Assur.

It’s in my job description.


End file.
